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Why should you be using Microservices?

Posted in UK on 07th March 2017

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6 benefits of Microservices

Any developer worth their salt will be aware of the shift in the past 10 years from code-heavy monolithic applications to smaller, self-contained microservices. However, there remains some developers who continue to build new applications using monolithic architectures.

Thanks to the emergence of tools like Docker, developers have no reason not to embrace microservices, with Docker containers acting as a good way to develop and deploy microservices.

In a LinkedIn article, Josh Cole, full-stack software developer for online estate agent Settled, highlights the benefits of microservices, in light of the advent of Docker:

1. Predictability

By defining what goes into the containers at build time, the behaviour of the application is guaranteed, no matter what machine it’s running on. So, no more incompatibilities between developers with varying versions of dependencies on their local boxes slowing the whole thing down.

2. Portability

As well as the predictability that comes from containerisation, complete environment encapsulation means applications are extremely portable, too. It’s all there, encapsulated within the container, ready to be quickly deployed without any fuss and zero manual setup.

3. Responsibility

Each individual microservice should be designated a single responsibility, decoupling it from the greater application, allowing developers to improve, remove or replace one particular aspect of the application without impacting the rest of it.

4. Scalability

Unlike monoliths, microservices are easy to scale both vertically and horizontally, thanks to being decoupled from all other services and having a single responsibility. This allows developers to easily spin up more containers or servers and put a load balancer in front of them.

5. Securability

A container runs its own operating system, which is completely separate from the host OS; meaning the only entry paints are those defined at build time. Typically, these cannot be modified once deployed, so if someone were to gain access to the container, they’d have a hard time doing much damage.

6. Agility

Docker shares the kernel between the host OS and the OS inside the container, meaning containers usually take less than one second to boot up. So it’s straight to business.

For your next project, make sure you’ve got the microservices expertise to make the whole thing run smoothly.